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Fans all knew why Oklahoma made the tournament

Andrew Joseph
Published 7:36 p.m. ET March 11, 2018

The Oklahoma Sooners have won two games since Feb. 1. They have lost 8 of their past 10 games.

But nobody was surprised to see the Sooners in the NCAA tournament.

When the bracket was unveiled on Sunday, committee chair Bruce Rasmussen pointed at Oklahoma's quality wins early in the season as being enough to get the Sooners in the field. But really, college basketball fans knew the answer:

Trae Young.

The NCAA tournament is a television event. For much of the college basketball season, Trae Young's games were appointment TV viewing. His Steph Curry-like shots and numbers drew fans to college basketball. The committee wasn't going to leave that caliber of a star out. It was that simple.

I wish they would just overtly come out and say "Look, this is TV. We're not keeping Trae Young out." instead of annually making up arbitrary crap about mid-majors that's neither consistent nor true in most cases.